Minutes after Casandra “Cassie” Ventura finished her harrowing testimony at Sean Combs’ sex-trafficking and racketeering trial Friday, she and her husband, Alex Fine, released powerful statements, vowing to continue her “healing” process.
“This week has been extremely challenging, but also remarkably empowering and healing for me. I hope that my testimony has given strength and a voice to other survivors, and can help others who have suffered to speak up and also heal from abuse and fear,” Ventura said in the statement shared by her lawyer, Douglas Wigdor. “For me, the more I heal, the more I can remember. And the more I can remember, the more I will never forget.”
Fine, who married Ventura in 2019, praised his wife’s courage in a separate statement also shared by Wigdor. “Over the past five days, the world has gotten to witness the strength and bravery of my wife, freeing herself of her past,” Fine said. The professional bull-rider and actor has been by Ventura’s side in New York for her dramatic turn on the witness stand while she’s eight-and-a-half months pregnant with their third child.
“There has been speculation online surrounding how it must feel for me to sit there and listen to my wife’s testimony. I have felt so many things sitting there. I have felt tremendous pride and overwhelming love for Cass. I have felt profound anger that she has been subjected to sitting in front of a person who tried to break her,” he said.
Fine then addressed Combs directly. “You did not break her spirit nor her smile that lights up every room,” he said. “You did not break the souls of a mother who gives the best hugs and plays the silliest games with our little girls. You did not break the woman who has made me a better man.”
The couple issued their statements on the fifth day of Combs’ trial now underway in federal court in Manhattan. Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges he sex-trafficked Ventura and another woman while running a violent criminal enterprise.
Authorities arrested Combs last September after a grand jury returned an indictment that closely mirrored the civil lawsuit Ventura filed against Combs in November 2023. When the lawsuit was filed, Wigdor said Cassie suffered immensely at the hands of Combs but that her new family gave her renewed purpose, “saving her from the trauma that had consumed over a decade of her life.” In his statement Friday, Fine rejected any suggestion he rescued Ventura.
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
“I did not save Cassie, as some have said. To say that is an insult to the years of painful work my wife has done to save herself,” Fine said. “Cassie saved Cassie. She alone broke free from abuse, coercion, violence and threats. She did the work of fighting the demons that only a demon himself could have done to her. All I have done is love her as she has loved me.”
Fine said his wife is moving on with a devoted family by her side. “Her life is now surrounded by love, laughter and our family. This horrific chapter is forever put behind us, and we will not be making additional statements,” he said. “We appreciate all of the love and support we have received, and we ask that you respect our privacy as we welcome our son into a world that is now safer because of his mom.”
Over her four days on the witness stand, Ventura described her 11-year relationship with Combs as loving at first but then an abusive arrangement that left her feeling “trapped” and “terrified.” She said Combs used violence and threats to control her, and that eventually, she considered it her “job” to take part in sex marathons called freak-offs that Combs would choreograph, watch and record.
Ventura said trauma from her relationship with Combs left her feeling suicidal. “I just tried to walk out the front door into traffic, and my husband would not let me,” she testified.
“It has been an incredible honor to represent Cassie Ventura,” Wigdor said in his own statement Friday. “Her bravery and courage will always be remembered. I am hopeful that the filing of her civil lawsuit and her testimony this week in the criminal case will help her in recovering from the years of abuse that she was forced to endure.”
From Rolling Stone US
